


Peacetime

by orphan_account



Category: Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, One Year Later, Tooth Rotting Fluff, elorcan baby - Freeform, post-epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:07:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23506582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Can I help you with anything?”“Help? No! Come say hello.”“Oh, Salvaterre and I have been acquainted for a few hundred years, but thanks anyway,” Fenrys chuckled from behind Rowan.“Say hello to her,” Lorcan said, to Rowan’s surprise. He shifted the bundle in his arms and it hit Rowan like a shockwave. A baby.Well, that would certainly explain the smile.
Relationships: Aedion Ashryver/Lysandra, Elide Lochan/Lorcan Salvaterre, Fenrys & Rowan Whitethorn, Lorcan Salvaterre & Rowan Whitethorn
Comments: 9
Kudos: 124





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Textpost inspired fluff. Plotless. Tooth-rotting. You know, my usual.

Rowan, in all his three hundred years, had never thought he would see a sight like this. Quiet footsteps caught his ear and he turned in time to see Fenrys slip up behind him and let out a low whistle.

“What the hell?”

They stood by the doors of the large kitchen, usually empty this time of day, and watched the two figures moving about inside. Elide was there, standing on the counter, stretching her small frame upwards to reach a high shelf. Lorcan sat at the long counter, huge frame perched on a small stool, looking down at something he held.

“Is he… smiling?” Fenrys hissed.

This time Lorcan heard Fenrys’ voice and looked up. When his dark eyes landed on the two Fae his smile dropped away, but his face was still far less brooding than Rowan had ever seen it. Probably less brooding than it had ever been in Lorcan’s five long centuries.

Elide hopped down from the counter, finally noticing Rowan and Fenrys. A smile split her face, eyes lighting up. “Come in!” She shot Lorcan a look, lips pursed, as though admonishing him for his manners. He just lifted one shoulder and she shook her head, Elide as used to his taciturn attitude as anyone else.

Stepping through the doorway warily, Rowan turned to Elide before her husband. “Here from Perranth for less than an hour and you’re already raiding my kitchens.” Elide looked slightly guilty, but the humor in Rowan’s tone earned him another smile. “Can I help you with anything?”

“Help? No! Come say hello.”

“Oh, Salvaterre and I have been acquainted for a few hundred years, but thanks anyway,” Fenrys chuckled from behind Rowan. 

Elide and Lorcan’s eyes met in silent conversation. How they could do that so effectively without the same bond that linked Rowan and Aelin’s thoughts, he had no idea.

“Say hello to  _ her,”  _ Lorcan said, to Rowan’s surprise. He shifted the bundle in his arms and it hit Rowan like a shockwave.

Well, that would certainly explain the smile. 

Realization dawned on Fenrys in the same moment. The surprise on his beautiful face likely matched the look on Rowan’s. “You’re telling me Lord Brooding charmed a woman enough that she  _ willingly _ had a child with him?  _ Knowing  _ it might turn out like he is?” The hiss of pain that followed was thanks to Rowan slamming a foot down on Fenrys’ as Elide’s face flamed. A low growl rumbled from Lorcan.

“What Fenrys means is we would  _ love  _ to see her.”

Elide reached out, taking the baby from Lorcan’s arms, and Rowan was reminded of the difference between the pair. Seated on the stool, Lorcan was still taller than Elide standing, and the bundled-up child looked miniscule in his arms.

Elide approached the younger Fae with her child. “Her name is Callisto.”

Named for the Fae huntress of legend. She was gifted with shifting and often took the form of a bear, now burning in the sky as a constellation. If Rowan had to bet, the name had been Lorcan’s idea.

As Elide nestled the baby girl in Rowan’s arms Lorcan watched him carefully. Protective, Rowan realized, of this tiny Demi-Fae. She had a shock of black hair and impossibly dark eyes that peered up at him with an innocent curiosity. No surprises there, Lorcan and Elide both had hair and eyes like spilled ink. Her complexion was far closer to Lorcan’s darker tones than Elide’s pale skin, and even within her round infant face Rowan could see hints of Lorcan’s features. This child would look like her father which, he could grudgingly admit, certainly wouldn’t hurt her.

“She’s beautiful,” he breathed. He and Aelin would have children, definitely, but they had both agreed that should happen after some rebuilding was underway. Once things slowed down a little.

Fenrys was quiet for once. He’d never been one for children (or even settling down with any one partner) but he looked charmed by the tiny being in front of him, smiling wide. Glancing up at Lorcan who was clearly stifling a small smile, he asked the question lingering in Rowan’s mind.

“Has she shown any sign of…”

“Of my killing power? Thank the gods, she hasn’t yet.” Elide frowned and opened her mouth to say something but it was clearly a long-running argument because Lorcan spoke again for her. “I know what you say about power being what you make it, but that darkness reminds me far too much of everything I’ve done. That said, if she does manifest powers, she’ll be well trained.”

Rowan blinked in surprise. 

“That’s more words than I’ve heard from you in decades, boyo,” Fenrys laughed. Rowan didn’t admonish him this time, mostly because he agreed.

“Who are you calling  _ boyo?”  _ Lorcan snarled, a growl rising in his throat. Ah, there was that usual temper, the kind only Fenrys could pull from people.

At the low rumble of his voice Rowan expected Callisto to become scared, but instead she cooed and waved her hands in her father’s direction. Clearly, his annoyance was a familiar sound to her.

Rowan handed little Callisto back to Lorcan. “How did we not know about this? Nobody even knew you were expecting!”

Elide’s eyes danced with mischief. “We wanted to keep it a surprise. The busy, cold winter months were just a good excuse to stay amongst ourselves for a while.”

Turning back to Lorcan, Rowan could see something in his eyes, his face. The same sharp features and inscrutable black eyes stared back at him, but they were different. This past year free of Maeve, with the woman he loved and now a  _ child,  _ had softened him. He was still a hardened bastard, still a seasoned warrior gifted with dark magic and a questionable conscience, but something tempered his rage, something he’d never had a chance at in five hundred years. Love. The very thing that had saved Rowan from his own miserable existence.

With a shallow bow at the couple, Rowan slipped from the kitchen, stopping just outside the doorway to say, “I won’t ruin the surprise for anyone else.”


	2. Chapter 2

Aedion was wandering among the towering library shelves, Lysandra a few steps behind trailing her fingers over the books’ spines, when he abruptly stopped walking. Tilting his head, he frowned. “Do you hear that?”

Lys shook her head. “Hear what?”

“Two heartbeats but… no other noises.”

Following the sound to the end of the row, he found the source. Tucked into a small alcove was an unreasonably large form, clearly asleep, hands folded and resting gently atop another sleeping form — a baby. It lay sprawled on the chest of the dark haired…

“Aedion, oh my gods that’s Lorcan. It’s Lorcan!” Lysandra hissed, and with a start Aedion realized she was right. He’d met little Callisto, (or Cal, as Dorian called her) when Elide and Lorcan had arrived days ago. Since then, the Fae and his new family had kept more to themselves when not in official meetings. Aedion had met Lorcan several times during and after the war, and each time found him too silent and brooding. Now, though, with his hair splayed around him and his hands protectively clasped over his child, he looked… normal.

“This doesn’t seem real,” Lysandra whispered to him with a smile.

“I almost want to leave before he wakes up,” Aedion murmured back. “I feel like he might kill us if-”

“Too late,” Lorcan mumbled, not opening his eyes. “I wasn’t asleep but Callisto finally is, and if she wakes up, I’m leaving her in your room next time she’s crying in the middle of the night.”

Lysandra covered her mouth with a hand to stifle her laugh as she and Aedion tiptoed backwards slowly before she stopped him with a hand on his arm. “I hope you were kidding about the middle of the night thing, but we’d be happy to babysit at some time.”

Aedion shot her a look of betrayal which she shrugged off.  _ This baby is cute,  _ she mouthed at him.

“I wasn’t kidding,” came Lorcan’s monotone reply.

>

Once the shifter and her general (quietly) left, Lorcan opened his eyes. He allowed a tendril of black to brush Callisto’s chubby cheek. She stirred, but didn’t wake. It returned, poking her side gently. This woke her, and he prodded her again, tickling. She giggled at the feeling and tried to grab the darkness which darted away quickly.

Laughing, her clumsy fingers grasped for the magic again and again, always  _ just  _ out of reach. Seeing this, seeing his magic used for some good, even just playful, cheerful good, made Lorcan’s heart swell in a way he wasn’t used to. In a way he was  _ getting  _ used to. 

Giving up on the game, she crawled up from Lorcan’s stomach to his chest where she poked at his face. “Hey,” he growled, no malice in his tone, when her pudgy finger found his eye with a little too much force. “You’re trouble, you know that?”

Callisto’s eyes reminded him of Elide’s. True, his eyes were dark too, but Callisto’s were a warm kind of dark, not the shadowed black that went better with a glower than a smile. “You got some of me, but enough of your mother you’ll turn out good,” he said to her. She just stared at him, uncomprehending. “Mama,” he reiterated. This word she knew, a smile lighting up her face.

“Mamamama,” she babbled.

“Yeah, yeah, you like her better,” he laughed. “Let’s go see mama, she might be done with her work by now.”

Inexplicably, Callisto’s favorite way to be held was tucked against his side and under his arm like a parcel. He obliged her, the calloused hand that was more used to holding blades than infants spread wide to support her little body. Muscles honed by immeasurable hours of training, of fighting, now cradled his child.

Lorcan had been born and bred for war but maybe, just maybe, he could make something good out of all this peace. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you know the real tale of Callisto, it’s much more sad than that. I wanted to use the name without such a negative connotation like the actual myth has, so I made something up loosely based on the Roman myth


End file.
